Everything is working as intended, woohoo! Except... now I am making changes to my templates, meaning primarily the HTML parts. Just editing text here and there that I want to update.

Unfortunately, after I do so, and I upload the files via SFTP (FileZilla) to the app directory's template folder, it does not reflect the changes on the site. I've restarted nginx, confirmed the correct files are going to the correct folder (I think?), tried collectstatic again (which does not update anything, though I am only changing the html so I wouldn't expect it to), and cleared my local cache (tried incognito, etc.).

Am I just missing something regarding how to make those changes reflect on the actual website? I go to my domain (which works to connect to my nginx server) but it just shows the original base.html page that I first uploaded. I can't get any changes to take place when I visit the site.

This is bizarre! I changed the permissions on the file, and now everytime you refresh the site, it alternates between the good one, and the old one. Like it's fighting with another file to be displayed??